Preaching Through Chaos and Cruelty
This week I’m taking a break from reflecting on reconciliation in order to think about preaching during these chaotic, confusing, and, increasingly, cruel days. I recognize that most of you are not preachers, though I imagine many you are in a pew most Sundays for worship, including a sermon.
What follows may be largely self-serving; I’m convinced this time calls for certain emphases from the pulpit but haven’t had the time to consider specifically what those might be. So, with apologies to those with little interest in what preachers might be grappling with these days, here are ten things I’m trying to remember as I prepare to step into the pulpit each Sunday morning.
The following reflect my own context and I’m curious what you’d add from the vantage point of your own community.
1) Preach the gospel. The gospel is what differentiates preaching from any other verbal communication and the gospel is applicable to each of our circumstances, including the uncertain barrage unleashed by the presidential administration. The gathered people of God always need to hear the good news, especially when there is so much bad news.
2) Preach with pastoral sensitivity. The news about racists being elevated to positions of political power, of religious asylum seekers being deported, of life-saving initiatives being shut down… these aren’t the only things or even the most important things most members of a congregation are facing, but many are being impacted somehow. I was surprised by the man’s tears who came to speak with me after last Sunday’s sermon; he shared his grief both as an immigrant and a military veteran. Whatever prophetic zeal we bring into the pulpit should be balanced with pastoral sensitivity about the griefs and laments inflicted by slander, threat, and deception.
3) Preach precisely. By insidious design, it’s impossible for most of us to keep track of all the damage being inflicted by the administration. The confusion and, for some, despair that many in our churches are experiencing are not accidental. Preachers can’t become experts about all of these things, but we can maintain a limited focus on one or two areas. Given my own ministry context and call, I’ve chosen to stay alert to the administration’s antagonisms toward refugees and immigrants and their attacks on civil rights. Finding natural ways to reference these areas in a sermon reminds the congregation to remain vigilant while showing how the gospel equips us to respond.
4) Preach non-anxiously. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. While ours is a particularly fraught moment, God’s people have lived through much worse. (Last week’s passage from Luke 22 included Jesus’ observation that “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them…” The contemporary application was almost too obvious to state.) While white American Christians are often detached from these histories of faithfulness, I’ve been deeply encouraged by the reminders from Black colleagues about God’s trustworthiness in even the darkest, deepest valley. There will be times when it’s appropriate to bring anger and indignation into the pulpit; anxiety, though, we can leave behind.
5) Preach with pathos. Abraham Heschel writes that God must be understood by his pathos: “The reaction of the divine self, its manifestations in the form of love, mercy, disappointment or anger convey the profound intensity of the divine inwardness.” What Heschel says of the prophet should also be true for the preacher. “The task of the prophet,” he writes, “is to convey the word of God. Yet the word is aglow with the pathos. One cannot understand the word without sensing the pathos. And one could not impassion others and remain unstirred. The prophet should not be regarded as an ambassador who must be dispassionate in order to be effective.” Let our preaching express this divine pathos, expressed at times as anger and very often as love.
What does pathos look like? I return regularly to Frederick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” In it he declared,
For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
6) Preach prayerfully. All week long our congregations have been formed through the bifurcating lens of winners and losers, good guys and bad guys, enemies and friends. Henri Nouwen confessed, “I am aware of my tendency to divide people into good ones and evil ones… But I understand that we are all touched by evil and limitation and all need mercy and grace.”
To preach prayerfully is to remember the nature of the fight we find ourselves in. “In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor,” writes the psalmist and we are surrounded by the evidence of his observation. But it is the principalities and powers which are our true concern, the spiritual forces of evil who fester beneath sate-sanctioned savagery. And so our preaching will not lead people to place their hope in anything other than the Savior who put death to death and overcame evil with good.
7) Preach communally. One of the heartbreaks of the past few years has been watching so many Christians claim loudly that the president and his movement are ordained by God. The damage done by these apologists has been devestating to witness; so many have found their faith buffeted or shattered by mentors, pastors, and parents who’ve been sucked so deeply into – I’m not sure how else to say it – political idolatry. They leave behind a trail of distrust and doubt.
Because we’re often preaching to people who are on their last church legs, our words must point to the possibility of a community beyond the one that shattered their hearts. Our messages don’t need to over-promise; if anything, our vision for the church will be chastened and humble. Thankfully, the stories of God’s people in Scripture are not glamorous. God is allergic to both hype and hypocrisy among his people and so are those who are stumbling into the back rows of our sanctuaries. So we preach Christ among the broken and beaten-up people, Christ among the skeptics and doubters, Christ among those barely-hanging-on and with one-foot-out-the-door. But Christ is always among his people, and so our preaching will be an invitation to make a home, however tender and in-process, among Christ’s people.
8) Preach with enemy-love. This is a hard one for me these days. The presidential administration has made itself an enemy to many poor and vulnerable people and it’s hard not to respond in kind. I’m tempted to speak about the president and his enablers in less-than-human terms, to rely on generalizations which obscure their humanity. Jesus, of course, does not leave this option available for his followers. We are called to love our enemies and there’s no point in rejoicing in the fact that God reconciled us, as Paul writes, “while we were enemies” if we aren’t willing to attempt the same.
This means that our preaching will acknowledge wicked and unjust acts while always leaving open the possibility that those acting wickedly will be brought to repentance and commit themselves to repair. Our preaching must never foreclose on the apocalyptic possibilities of grace: Zacchaeus called down from his perch, Saul leveled on the way to Damascus, a rich man who does sell all he owns to give the proceeds to the poor. After all, without such unlikely possibilities, why are we even preaching?
9) Preach confidently. One of the strange things about this moment is the number of people working to convince us that we can’t trust what we’re seeing. We’re told, for example,that those weren’t Nazi-like salutes that Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, and others displayed; they were innocent waves, expressions of love, etc. If we’re not careful, we might slide into a kind of diplomatic bothsidesing which qualifies and nuances what is blatant evil. Preacher, trust what your eyes have seen and what your ears have heard! Don’t let the obfuscating static constantly streaming from those who’ve bowed the knee to the administration distract you from what you know to be good, beautiful, and true. And then preach with the boldness the gospel always deserves and the moment requires.
10) Preach Jesus. Another strange thing about these days is the way a preacher, simply by proclaiming the gospel faithfully in our circumstances, can become the focus of attention. That attention can be directed as scorn and opposition or praise and adulation. It’s strange because each time a preacher walks into a pulpit our task is to point beyond ourselves to Jesus. True, we bring our own experiences and perspective but these are the starting point from which we testify to Christ and his salvation. As others make too much of the preacher – as a hero or a villain – we will continue to do what preachers have always done, point to Jesus as our only hope in life and in death.
(Photo credit: Alexander Mass.)
Brown Faces, White Spaces Video
If you missed my recent conversation with Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson and Latasha Morrison about Latasha’s new book, you can watch the video here. Stay tuned for info about our next webinar about Natasha’s book, Voices of Lament.